
<h1>WHAT IS LADDERS?</h1>
LADDERS is a simple SCRUM management software. It is built on the basic
assumption of hierarchical nature of tasks performed in an organization.
If a developer is working on a coding task, that task must belong to one
of the stories his manager has committed to. Every story that manager
has must align with one of the initiative business team has in their
plan. And every business initiative must align with one of the projects
Director or CEO has agreed to. This hierarchy of tasks is referred to as
LADDER.

<h1>RUNNING LADDERS</h1>
1] Run the default mongod.exe on the command line.
(mongodb://localhost:27017/test) 2] Run the StartLadders.main. It will
open http server on port 82. 3] Open browser: http://localhost:82

<h1>LADDERS TENETS</h1>
<ol>
	<li>LADDERS allows customization of steps in the ladder
		(Schema.js). It can be as simple as Story->Task. Or as complex as
		Strategy->Project->Epic->Subepic->Story->Task-Subtask.</li>
	<li>LADDERS embraces the idea of agile. It allows dynamic schemas.
		The columns/fields can be changed, added, or removed from the schema
		without losing data from the existing rows.</li>
	<li>LADDERS works stand-alone as a web server and doesn't need
		TomCat or other servlet container to run.</li>
	<li>LADDERS is simple and can be customized to fit any complex
		needs of any SCRUM project.</li>
	<li>LADDERS will always be fast. The server side latency of every
		request will never exceed 500ms regardless of number of rows in the
		db.</li>
	<li>LADDERS won't have any edit/save buttons. Developers hate to
		update tools. Let's make it as easy as possible.</li>
	<li>LADDERS won't have any pagination. It displays maximum 200
		rows in a single view. Use filters beyond that to get to what you
		want.</li>
</ol>

<h1>HISTORY</h1>
After using ~10 different project management tools over last 16 years, I
realized I need to write my own tool that makes sense. I started
thinking about hierarchical concept of tasks in around 2008. Then in
2010, Amit and I agreed that this needs to be done. We had agreed on
most of the ideas while our kids played in the background. Then we got
busy with our lives and forgot about LADDERS. I finally got motivated in
Mar 2013 during my vacation in India and wrote the ver1.0 of LADDERS. As
much as I enjoyed coding it, I am quickly realizing that I am not the
best developer to take it forward. As code starts getting complex, it
needs someone who is a better coder than me and has more development
discipline to write quality code. My current code will fail very basic
code review rules. Hopefully someone will make it better or just rewrite
the whole thing from scratch.


<h1>ROLLUPS</h1>
Everything rolls up in LADDERS. Every numeric and text value from the
group rolls up to the parents.

